Skip to Main Content

Bulgarian Collections in the Library of Congress

Prints and Photographs

Bains News Service. Ferdinand of Bulgaria and family. [Undated]. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

Most of the holdings related to Bulgaria in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Reading Room are from non-Bulgarian sources such as photographic collections or albums of visitors to Bulgaria, American news service collections, or the stereograph card collection. Examples of American collections with interesting Bulgarian content are the George Grantham Bain Collection and the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection. Bain was a photojournalist, whose work includes photos shot during the Balkan Wars in the early part of the twentieth century. The Carpenters were authors of geography textbooks, and one their photo albums of a 1923 trip to Europe and the Balkans has many fascinating pictures of Bulgarian street scenes.

Besides photographs, the Prints & Photographs Reading Room has several uncataloged collections of Bulgarian prints and posters. There are prints by Christo, the well-known wrapping artist, which were received on Copyright deposit. In the 1980s the Library received sixty-two works by contemporary Bulgarian printmakers as part of an exhibit entitled "From Bulgaria: Contemporary Bulgarian Printmakers." The exhibit was co-sponsored by the Library of Congress, the Union of Bulgarian Artists, and the Committee for Culture of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, with help from the United States Information Agency. The items in this collection of Bulgarian prints are uncataloged.

The poster collections contain posters for film, theater, music, and art exhibitions, in addition to some propaganda items. Search for visual materials at the Library of Congress using the search box on the Library's home page and limit your search to "Photos, Prints, Drawings" or search in the Library's Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC). The article in this guide titled Bulgarian Visual Resources at the Library of Congress has further information on materials in the Prints & Photographs Reading Room as well as on Bulgarian visual materials in other parts of the Library of Congress.

About the Prints & Photographs Division

Unique in their scope and richness, the picture collections number more than 16 million images. These include photographs, historical prints, posters, cartoons, documentary drawings, fine prints, and architectural and engineering designs. While international in scope, the collections are particularly strong in materials documenting the history of the United States and the lives, interests, and achievements of the American people..